Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s richest man and current prime minister, must be totally and utterly terrified of Italy’s forces of law and order.  Such is his fear that he is going to enormous lengths to keep himself out of Italy’s courts, and, presumably, Italy’s prisons.

After one such attempt to keep Silvo Berlusconi out of trouble, the Lodo Alfano, met with the disapproval of the highest court in Italy, Silvio shouted, screamed and kicked up a huge fuss.  Then he turned round and told his, presumably very highly paid, pet legal eagle, Nicolo Ghedini, to sort the situation out.

Ghedini after burning presumably copious amounts of  midnight oil in the company of Italy’s justice minister, Angelino Alfano (Yes, he of the Lodo Alfano),  came up with a whizzo way to keep his beloved boss out of legal hot water, and, presumably, prison.

What these two erstwhile politicians/lawyers/Berlusconi disciples/clever chaps came up with is a way to ensure that certain court cases in Italy fizzle out automatically if they cannot be resolved in 2 years.  Yes, those with some knowledge of the law will recognise this as being a form of ‘time barring’.

Italy’s legal system is so darn sluggish that Berlusconi’s lawyer Ghedini and Italy’s justice minister Alfano’s cunning plan is bound to have the desired effect, and keep Silvio from ending up behind bars.

It is a scheme that is outwardly so simple – when you have friends in very high places – and so foolproof.  But some Italians are not being fooled by the latest Save Silvio law.

They, including some well known Italian names, think the law is plainly unjust.

Saviano Collects Signatures

Roberto Saviano, author and Italy’s number one anti-mafia crusader (who seems to be in the news quite a bit at the moment) thinks the latest attempt to save Silvio’s skin is a disgrace.  Saviano believes the new law will serve to protect not only Silvio Berlusconi, but a whole host of others who do not deserve having their skins saved.

Additionally others who are legitimately seeking compensation via Italy’s courts for various reasons will find that the new law will reduce their chances of winning compensation to less than zero in a number of high profile cases (Thyssen, Clinca Santa Rita, Scalata BNL).

Saviano is not alone in his belief that this new custom made law is unfair. The signatures of some 210,000 Italians which do not want the new law to be passed have been collected.  On the list which Saviano instigated are the signatures of well know Italians such as Andrea Camilleri, the writer of the famous Commissiario Montalbano books, as well as the governor of the Italian Piedmont Region Mercedes Bresso.

Berlusconi and Controversy, Again

Yes, Berlusconi’s latest attempt to cast a silver bullet to protect himself from those werewolf-like Italian magistrates is proving controversial.   But then Silvio Berlusconi and controversy have never exactly been strangers.

Still, I do not understand just why Silvio Berlusconi is so darn terrified of Italy’s magistrates.  Surely he, of all people, need not feel so fearful.

Source:

La Repubblica, 17 November 2009 – Appello di Saviano, oltre 210.000 firme il sì di Camilleri e Montaldo – Saviano’s Appeal, Over 210,000 Signatures, plus Camilleri and Montaldo

Related articles by Zemanta

• Silvio Berlusconi uses food summit as excuse to miss trial (telegraph.co.uk)

---

Copyright © blogfromitaly.com 2005 – 2009
This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only.
The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it makes the page you are viewing an infringement of the copyright.
Please note that GlobalPost.com and Shesdaily.blogspot.com have permission to use blogfromitaly.com’s rss feed.

When mention is made of Italy, mixed in with thoughts of pasta and wine will be the Vatican and, the mafia.

With regard to which springs to mind first, Vatican or mafia, I have no idea, but it does not matter really, as both are intrinsically Italian.

Yet the Vatican champions the morally right, while the mafia certainly does not.

In theory the Vatican should be constantly and highly critical of the mafia, or, for that matter, any other organisation which encourages human beings to harm one another.  In practice, however, this does not seem to be the case.  The Vatican does make disgruntled noises on the mafia front in Italy from time to time, but the criticism is by no means constant.

This reluctance of the Vatican to speak out openly against the mafia  is something which has always struck me as being faintly odd about Italy.

Recently though, something has changed and the Vatican appears to be firming up its anti-mafia stance.

The Vatican Condemns the Mafia

Il Fatto Quotidiano, Italy’s newest daily newspaper, and the only one which covers issues which most other Italian dailies avoid, carried an interesting article on the Roman Catholic church in its Friday 13th November edition.

The article reports on calls from within the  Roman Catholic church for it to take a hard line stance on the issue of organised crime in Italy’s mafia-wracked south.

But why?
What could be behind the Vatican making anti-mafia noises? Noises which seem to be rather rare in Italy, or at least that is my impression.

Roberto Saviano

Saviano, who, you might remember, wrote a book which put one of Italy’s many mafia organisations, the Naples’ Camorra, in a bad light.  The book also showed Italy in a dark light, and left Italy with a tarnished image.

In his book, Gomorrah, which caused quite a stir in Italy – and seems to have stirred Italy into action to a great extent – there is a story of an anti-mafia Roman Catholic priest.  This brave priest stood up against the mafia in his parish and spoke out openly against their activities.

For his pains, this priest, Don Pepino Diana was executed by the camorra mafia.  While the execution did not do the camorra’s public image any favours, what struck me about the Don Peppino Diana affair was that he appeared to be a lone crusader.

For reasons unknown, the Vatican seemed to have left its representative to his own fate.  Support from Rome appeared to be virtually zero. Certainly Saviano does not mention loud condemnation of the murder of one of its priests coming from the Vatican in his book.  Nor did the Vatican try to stand up for its man when attempts were made to blacken his name in local newspapers.

It is possible that the handling of Don Peppino Diana affair did not show the Vatican in a great light – especially in the eyes of those the Vatican purports to love the most – the young people of this world.  It is probable that the young in Italy’s most mafia dominated areas felt as though they had nobody to turn to, not even the church.

Possibly as a result of the attention Saviano’s book garnered, someone in the Vatican realised that this situation reflected badly upon the Roman Catholic Church.

To attempt to redeem itself, and thus attempt to restore the faith of Italians in the church, taking a clear position on the mafia issue was probably considered as being one way for the church to win back hearts and minds in Italy, particularly those of the country’s youth.

And hearts and minds did need winning back in view of the sticky issue of the Roman Catholic church and paedophilia.

Paedophilia Accusations

At least some of Italy’s younger generation, and their parents for that matter, will have heard of the cases, largely in the United States of America, in which Roman Catholic priests had been accused of molesting young people in their charge.

In the United States alone, the Vatican has paid out more than one billion dollars in compensation to victims.

Again, for an organisation which courts the attention of the world’s youth, this did (does) not look good.

Initially the Vatican tried to keep these sordid affairs as hush-hush as possible, but people speak, and there are a lot of Italian-Americans who probably keep in contact with relatives and friends back in the old country.   Word of unholy acts by holy-men will have got back to Italy.

Questions would have been asked by Italians, and some will have become disillusioned with the ways of Catholicism.  Conversations may well have moved on from priests and young people to the Vatican’s virtual silence on Italy’s mafia.  Silence, whether honest or not, tends to be looked upon negatively.

Net result?  Widespread disillusionment with the Roman Catholic church and the Vatican in Italy.  The image of the Roman Catholic church had been damaged.

Young Italians

Young people were the victims of the wayward priests and their sexual desires, and young people are also the mafia’s favourite recruits, as Saviano’s book observes.

The Roman Catholic church though, loves to demonstrate its all embracing love for young people.  The Vatican is as keen to recruit young people as the mafia is, or so it would seem.

However while the Roman Catholic church tried to encourage young people to swell its ranks, it did not appear to openly discourage the same young people from becoming part of the mafia.  It was almost as if mafia membership and church going went hand in hand.

To the uninformed the relationship gave the impression that good was holding hands with evil.

The mafia though, does not believe it is evil.  Quite the opposite in fact.  Mafia initiation ceremonies often include some religious artefact or other.

The mafia likes to be associated with the Roman Catholic church, and, on the face of it, the Roman Catholic church never seems to have done very much to question the validity of this relationship.  Could it be that the mafia is on the the Roman Catholic church’s greatest benefactors?

I know it’s stereotypical, but Catholic themes do often feature in films about Italy’s mafias.

All in all, by keeping silent on certain ‘relationships’, the Roman Catholic church was not doing itself any favours.

The War Against the Mafia

Another thing which may have encouraged the Vatican to speak up on the mafia issue in Italy is that the war being waged against the mafia in Italy seems to be having an affect.

Hardly a day goes by without Italy’s newspapers reporting on the arrest of some mafia bigwig or other.  For example, the supposed number two of Sicily’s cosa nostra was caught by Italian police very recently.

Mafia assets are being seized right, left and centre too. It does look as though progress is being made.

I’ll round this post off with a question, which might explain why the Vatican has been able to find the courage to speak up against the mafia in Italy:

Does the Vatican think that the mafia presents less of a threat than it did in the past?

Which leads to the obvious next question which is:

Is Italy winning the war against the mafia?

Wikipedia: Catholic sex abuse cases

---

Copyright © 2008
This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only.
The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it makes the page you are viewing an infringement of the copyright. (Digital Fingerprint:
)

I’m always looking for new roads and new experiences. The drive from our Lunigiana digs to the Emilia Romagna to the town of Calestano required a fair amount of driving some darn curvy roads. I let Martha do it. She needs the practice.

The colors were marvelous on the trip out. We didn’t stop to take pictures on the way because we’d be coming back the very same way. But alas, it’s November, the height of winter truffle season, and the fog set in with a vengeance in the afternoon, subduing the fall colors. You’ll have to settle for these.

In any case, the road from Berceto (a nice little town on the Via Francigena with a very interesting Romanesque church to visit) to the village of Calestano, where the truffle fair is held, had our necks craning at every turn. It was purty.

Despite the fact that Calestano was under the fog all day—and a bit nippy—we found the place hopping. There was an arcade full of truffle vendors selling the famed black truffle of Frango, packed with tables like you see on the right. Each table had an example of the class of truffle (on the right of the picture) and a basket of truffles for sale. Each class had a set market price. Class is largely determined by size. Bigger is better. We all knew that.

Winter truffles have more flavor than summer truffles. White truffles, the kind you find in Piemonte for example, are usually more pungent than black truffles—and cost a whole lot more. After all, we picket up a golfball sized beauty you see on the left for a mere €5.

What do you do at a truffle festival besides buying truffles (or a whole range of artisinal food items sold from open air booths that fill the streets)?

Well, you eat. Every restaurant in town and a few agriturismi out of town were serving a special truffle meal. They were nice enough to give us a table at the bar in the Albergo Mantovani since Italians had the sense to reserve their tables in advance and thus filled the restaurant. We had the fixed-price truffle meal, which was all they were serving unless you asked real nice for something else.

First we had polenta covered with a river of truffled fonduta (hot, molten cheese) over which truffle was grated in thin slices as you see over there to the left. That was the antipasto. Then we had the primo piatto; we both chose risotto with truffles. Then came a wonderful dish of slow roasted veal with a cream truffle sauce, the salad was radicchio with walnuts, and the sweet was a selection of the house cakes. Martha declined the meat course. With wine, water and service the bill came to €60.

Find out more about a small town truffle festival in the Emilia Romagna south of Parma: Fiera Nazionale del Tartufo Nero di Fragno

Christmas is a coming, and the little one has asked Santa for a guitar.  Don’t tell him, but Santa picked up a guitar for the little fellow this weekend.  This Santa likes guitars.

To obtain a guitar one, generally, heads to a guitar shop, and there is one I know down in the centre of Milan.  It’s always looked well stocked to me, and  its window is crammed full of glorious Gibsons and fabulous Fenders, just as any self respecting guitar shop should be.  Quite a mouthwatering selection.

What a great excuse Christmas shopping can be.  Dad gets to drool over lots of the lovely guitars while supposedly looking for one for his seven year old son.  The trouble is that the little one’s father has been a guitar lover for a good many years too.

I discovered an English speaking Italian guitar teacher today, which might be useful information for an expat looking to keep up his or her guitar skills.

Now, can you guess how many guitars Santa came out of the guitar shop with?

Excuses, Excuses

Yes, I came out with two.  One for the little one, and one for the big one, aka me.  ‘Well, someone’s got to accompany the little chap, now hasn’t he?’, went the excuse.

Dad is quite keen for his son to learn guitar, but was not sure ‘classical’ guitar would be cool enough for him.  I headed for acoustics, only to be told by one Andrea Ricca, resident guitar teacher at Milan’s Prina music store, that steel stringed acoustics are not fantastic for young hands.  He’s right of course.  I’d forgotten just how sore your fingers can become while trying to put together a few cords on a steel stringed guitar.

Guess Who Has Now Got Sore Fingers?

Seeing as someone was tinkering with his new guitar all evening, someone now has sore fingers.  For me this is par for the course. I can live with sore fingers, and have done before (I did have two guitars many moons past), but I don’t think seven year old would appreciate having sore fingers.   He’d just abandon the guitar and move onto something else, as kids often do.

In the hope that he might develop a serious interest in playing guitar, I got him a three-quarter sized classical version.  It was that or a rather cool looking mini-electric.  The Stratocaster look-alike was mighty tempting, but then I had visions of someone cranking up an amplifier and having us evicted from our apartment block.

For the moment, the classical guitar will do, and it does not sound too bad either.

The Prina Music Store in Milan

Prina Suoni and Muscia, which is the shop I visited, has a large selection of guitars, up to and including my dream guitar – the bowled backed electro-acoustic Ovation.  They are lovely, but out of my price range, and then there is the small matter of my not actually being able to play guitar.

When I announced my intention to equip myself with a guitar – in the best interests of my son – Andrea Ricca, who seems to work at Milan’s Prina music store, pointed me towards an Italian Eko acoustic model, a Korral 6 Natural.

I’m very pleased with it, aside from having sore fingers, it looks lovely, but then to me, just about all guitars always have.

Maybe it’s the intrinsically feminine shape of their bodies.  I don’t know, but I could happily fill a house with guitars, they are such wonderful things to look at.

By the way, Ricca of the Prina music store also teaches guitar, and speaks English too.  He has a 62 year old Canadian pupil, by all accounts.  And Milan, Italy based Andrea Ricca, who has the ‘maestro’ title in Italian, plays very well too.

While he can teach classical guitar, he seems to prefer to bring his students up on a diet of  rock and blues guitar.  Although he’s quite handy at quite a number of styles, as this video shows:

Andrea Ricca-bebop

Click here to view the embedded video.

You will find plenty more examples of Andrea Ricca’s guitar skills on YouTube too.

Here is the Prina Suoni & Musica shop website: Prina – but you really should go there if you like guitars.  It’s very close to central Milan too – Corso di Porta Ticinese, 3, is the address.

Guess who’s got his Christmas present a little early this year?  Yes, it’s Santa.

---

Copyright © 2008
This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only.
The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it makes the page you are viewing an infringement of the copyright. (Digital Fingerprint:
)

Every once in a while I stumble upon a little hole in the wall place with a story that leads me on a chase for information that doesn’t seem to stop. The little Oratorio della Misericordia di Volterra, pictured on the left, is just such a place.

Right next to the 11th century Duomo of Volterra, the little Oratorio houses a tiny museum and a bulletin board full of information on the workings of the Misericordia through history. The Misericordia began as a confraternity of the faithful working to give aid to anyone who needed it. You see, back in the 11th century the Government didn’t sponsor much in the way of assistance to the sick or the poor. Christians who actually took notice of the works of Jesus, a rarity now but an idea rife in the medieval period, were evidently eager to make some effort toward filling this gap and increasing their chances of getting to heaven. This, in a very small nutshell, was how the Confraternity was born.

The Volterra Misericordia came into existence in 1291 and is the fifth oldest in Italy after Florence (1244), Siena, Pontremoli, and Rifredi. Members came from all social classes. When doing their work, they dressed as you see on the left, covered so that their work could be done anonymously, a deal strictly between the individual and God. The picture shows how a member might transport the dead in a cart, perhaps during the plague years.

Volterra’s Oratorio della Misericordia has a couple of other interesting artifacts, including the cataletto shown on the right, used to transport the sick to a hospital upon the shoulders of, one assumes, several brothers of the Misericordia.

There’s also an antique mechanism used to help lift a person into a bed or means of transport called an egroleva, shown on the left.

Today the Misericordia has come to be associated with ambulance services. In a way, it’s always been part of a system of transporting the sick using the technology of the times.

Odd, too, that one of the deffinitions you come across for the word “Mesericordia” is that of a thin, medieval dagger used in giving the “mercy” blow to an opponent.

While much of the old piety and selfless devotion to anyone in need is absent from the Misericordia today, there are still huge organizations called “Confraternita della Misericordia” associated with the larger cities of Italy. And just as modern Christianity has moved away from the teachings of Jesus and toward the selective misreading of Leviticus as its central theology (Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum, the Confraternita della Misericordia has come under fire for accepting large sums of money from the Italian government to run Immigration camps or “CPT/Migrant’s Dentention Centres.”

How things change. How travel gets you to thinking…

——

More reading: A wonderful account of the Misericordia recorded in 1835 is found here

Volterra has a website: Misericordia di Volterra but it’s only in Italian

The pictures can be clicked to see them full size.